After the Van
by AminGholi
Summary: Offred is took away and sent to the colonies...


Fan Fic : The Handmaid's Tale - 4/30/14

Offred still exists. I was taken away by the eyes but I did not die. Nick did not say the truth, they weren't with the resistance and they weren't trying to protect me. Why did he lie? Maybe he didn't want me to kill myself on the way to the eyes van. Nothing was pleasant after getting into that Van, but nothing was pleasant for a long time so I didn't really bother me. The torture never stopped, whenever the torturer got tired a new one came in, I was tortured for 5 continuous days. At the end they didn't know what to do to me anymore, I had no more nails left and they had sexually abused me so much that even they had got tired of it. I didn't tell them anything , in fact I told them nothing. They asked me if I wanted to go to the colonies or to be hanged. I chose the latter but I was transferred to the colonies.

He threw me on the ground and told me "welcome to the colonies" .The colonies were not so much of a colony after all. One would think of a colony as a place with more freedom. Something was different here , the atmosphere was different ; it reeked of death. There was nothing in the vicinity except this enormous building that I was standing in front of waiting for the doors to open in order to enter. It was a prison. As I walked through the yard I saw many deformed individuals, there were no males here besides the officers. The officers were all in hazmat suits; apparently we were immune to whatever disease they were not immune of. A shackle was put on my feet and I was directed to a cell.

Nothing was similar to the arrangements of a normal prison that you might think of. Nobody was allowed to talk to other settlers. Settlers was what they called us , after all we did settle there. You got five hours of sleep each day and your food ration for a day would be either a stale bread or half a potato. None of this was enough; you needed to eat other things in order to keep your bodily functions going. You had to eat anything you found from the mutated rat to the grass. Each groups of ten were assigned to one officer and led outside to various areas in order to clean up. We were lead to nearby cities in order to clear out the pollution and also turn in any valuables we find in order to be transferred to the republic. The nuclear pollution was everywhere and we were exposed to it at all time. It was almost like they wanted us to die, but there was no logic in this view. We were benefitting them and there were no continuous batches of settlers arriving. Their goal seemed to be the expansion of the republic into the previously polluted areas and there was a lot of pollution to be cleared. Wouldn't it be wiser to keep us alive to serve the purpose and then massacre us? Is all this suffering really that necessary?

In a place with such pollution the occurrence of no disease really surprises anybody but this one did. It all started when a guard came back without his assigned group which he was supposed to come back with. He had bite marks on him so everybody assumed that the ten settlers assigned to him somehow rebelled by biting their officer. That seemed like a very good explanation until that specific officer started eating his fellow officers. It turned out that the officer's group was attacked by some sort of mutants which fed off the flesh of the living. They were not zombies, I guess maybe they were but they were different in some aspects. Apparently the nuclear outbreak caused the inhabitant's genes to change in a manner that they became unresponsive to logic and ate the flesh of other living beings. However they became really fast in movement, I guess they gave away their sense of reason for speed; It didn't make any sense but it was happening anyway.

The whole prison turned to chaos, apparently their bite somehow transformed you into one of them. While the outbreak happened I talked to my fellow settlers for the first time , it wasn't the best time but still it was something. We didn't know what to do but the best idea seemed to have a group, it gave us a sense of comfort. We started calling the undead the un-settlers, The un-settlers weren't really smart, if they were devouring somebody then they just focused on that specific one. We saw this as a good way to make it to the exit, we didn't have to sacrifice anybody because there were enough settlers being eaten already in order for us to make our escape. But where would we escape to?

We went to the officer's armory and put on full combat/hazmat suits and equipped ourselves with their firearms. I didn't even know the people in my group, but who cares there always time for that right or is there? We got to the yard and activated the switch to open the gates, there were no officers around because they all rushed to their doom when they heard the alarms go off. We got out and closed the gates, locking in the un-settler. However we knew that there are more un-settlers out here, after all this is where the root came from but still it is better to lock them in. We were out but what were we to do?

As we were wandering we found ourselves right in front of a group of un-settlers, we raised our guns to them but they were not attacking us; we didn't know what was happening. Why were these un-settlers not drenched in their prey's blood? They certainly had the characteristics of an un-settler but they were somehow different. This group was consisted of only women, one of them approached and I opened fire on her, nothing happened. Even shooting the brain did nothing to her , at that point I just dropped to the ground ready to die. She approached and said "fear not". I hadn't heard that phrase for a long time , they were not un-settlers, but what was an un-settler ? Something that we made up?

These women explained to us that they indeed do have the same supernatural powers of the un-settler but they have not lost control of their mind. Apparently the mutation affected men and women differently. Men became un-settlers and women became the super settlers I would assume! The women took us to their colony; it was a little bit better than the prison. They constructed walls around a small neighborhood and lived closely packed together. Apparently the fight between them and the un-settlers never ends well so they decide to avoid them. It turned out that they had resentments against the republic too and they were waiting for a chance to muster up forces and intel in order to attack the republic. We decided to raid the other nearby prisons in order to free the settler and then launch an attack on the republic but was that a what would we do when we take over the government?


End file.
